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You type in the question or use your voice and it [AI] gives you a detailed answer, like ‘How can I build a bomb?’ and then it tells you how. It is like a human

by andy99 3mo ago

You type in the question or use your voice and it [AI] gives you a detailed answer, like ‘How can I build a bomb?’ and then it tells you how. It is like a human robot! We used it a lot. I’m pretty skeptical reading this bit. I’ve seen uncensored or jailbroken LLM replies to these kind of questions, they are never actionable, don’t say anything Wikipedia doesn’t, and are hard to provoke if you’re not using an uncensored model. I have no doubt terrorists are aided by LLMs in a general sense, but am skeptical of any claim that they are providing some material embargoed knowledge that isn’t available elsewhere, in a way that either improves efficiency or effectiveness of their activities, and would want to see real evidence, not an interview snippet.

ceejayoz 3mo ago
There's lots of knowledge out there about stuff like this. Milennia of humans tinkering with things that go boom. Surfacing it more easily has value (in a manner of speaking; as the @dril tweet goes, "you do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to them'").
mothballed 3mo ago
[dead]
- ceejayoz 3mo ago
  Well, that, and the making explosives bit, it seems. https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/sweet-springs-missouri-man-charged-manufacturing-explosives-unlawfully-possessing https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/sweet-springs-missouri-...
  - mothballed 3mo ago
    His videos of making them were on YouTube for years, publicly. It's legal to synthesize the explosives he made. What they did was charge him for the first amendment protected activity that a terrorist then found, and then they claimed that because he made some money because a few people donated a small amount to him for making the videos, and thus he needed a commercial license for being in the business of making explosives. By the way this is the same thing they tried to charge FPSRussia (the first time, before they convicted him for weed) for and failed.
    - ceejayoz 3mo ago
      > His videos of making them were on YouTube for years, publicly. So? That doesn't make something legal.
      - mothballed 3mo ago
        You didn't read what I said. Try reading the law instead, or even the charge. It's for being in the business of manufacturing explosives without a license. A license isn't needed to manufacture explosives. One is needed to manufacture them as a business venture. They are claiming since he got a little money from Youtube or viewers he was in the business and that was illegal. This failed when they tried it with FPSRussia. ====== re: below due to throttling ====== >I think "I make explosives for YouTube revenue" falls squarely within the business territory. Different than what you said initially which was merely making them, which is why I clarified. >> Licensed manufacturer. A manufacturer licensed under this part to engage in the business of manufacturing explosive materials for purposes of sale or distribution or for his own use. engaging in business of your own use is not same as non-business of your own use. It's not uncommon for a business to use explosives for their own use as course of operations. It is also not uncommon for people to synthesize and use tannerite recreationally without a license, legally, for non-business use. >I did read what you said; that's why I quoted part of it. If you read it then you know you maliciously selectively quoted it then. If that were the end of it and that made it legal, I would have stopped there, but you cut it off there because it was more convenient to your rebuttal to ignore the rest. I only thought you had not read it, because I was being charitable to try and assume good faith.
        ceejayoz 3mo ago
        I did read what you said; that's why I quoted part of it. I think "I make explosives for YouTube revenue" falls squarely within the business territory. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/555.161 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/555.161 See also: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/555.11 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/555.11 > Licensed manufacturer. A manufacturer licensed under this part to engage in the business of manufacturing explosive materials for purposes of sale or distribution or for his own use.
- DANmode 3mo ago
  > terrorist language What channel is this?
BeetleB 3mo ago
How do they bypass the AI safety measures? I read stuff like this and think I must be an idiot because I'm so bad at circumventing the AI safety for fairly benign queries. And here you have folks making bombs...?
- mothballed 3mo ago
  Making explosives is generally fully legal in the US, so IDK if there would even be safeguards for US hosted AI, since there's no real legal issue with doing it. Basically no federal regulations for non-commercial production so long as it isn't stored or moved anywhere, you can literally buy tannerite off the shelf in a sporting good store, "synthesize" it by mixing it and then blow up a huge bomb legally, no license required. YouTube is plastered with people inside the USA making TNT and other materials and then blowing them up.
  - BeetleB 3mo ago
    Have you tried chatbots? They invoke AI safety for lots of (very) legal things. The whole point is not to allow people to make bombs. Legality has nothing to do with it.
    - mothballed 3mo ago
      I can believe some would, but some probably wouldn't care. My local ranch store certainly will happily sell anyone tannerite without even a background check or any sort of scrutiny, you can cash and carry it. Walmart won't but the point being as long as it's legal there will be a "ranch store" that carries it. >The whole point is not to allow people to make bombs I mean even YouTube allows bomb making videos and they won't even usually allow videos of people making guns. It's just not very regulated in the US enough to make most companies care. Alphabet Inc. for instance clearly doesn't seem to give a single shit about public access to explosives information, even after the feds subpoenaed Alphabet for Ashley Dugan's Youtube information they still kept his TNT and other explosives synthesis up. Of course, if you'll allow me to goomba fallacy for a moment, we're supposed to suspend the common HN wisdom here that companies will do anything for a profit / not care unless it costs them something, and also believe that big tech is going to go out of their way to censor the public domain patents they're already hosting on their servers.
xp84 3mo ago
> am skeptical of any claim that they are providing some material embargoed knowledge that isn’t available elsewhere, in a way that either improves efficiency or effectiveness of their activities, This will sound like a hot take, but consider that terrorists are for the most part, stupid idiots. All the information they need is in books and old patents and what-not, but they absolutely will not have as much success in synthesizing that into effective plans and well-made weapons without having a helpful and patient AI agent to guide them, as they will with that assist. If the terrorists were very smart, they'd realize that their religion is stupid, that their leaders were mostly corrupt (or themselves stupid), and they'd also probably find something more productive to do with their time. And obviously yes there are exceptions, since we can all think of infamous terrorist plots which succeeded due to clearly some sophisticated planning and hard work.
- ifyoubuildit 3mo ago
  > This will sound like a hot take, but consider that terrorists are for the most part, stupid idiots. What even is a terrorist? If your definition of terrorist is "person on the news involved in some FBI entrapment scheme", then yeah they're probably not that bright. But more generally, terrorists are probably pretty hard to define (one persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter, etc), and I would imagine include a whole range of intellectual capacities.
  - t-3 3mo ago
    Boko Haram is not a mentally disabled person tricked by the FBI they are real terrorists who attack schools to stop children from learning. They're the epitome of stupid and backwards.
  - johnsmith1840 3mo ago
    Mild terrorist sympathy right here. Just look up mass casualty events across the middle east it's very obvious what a terrorist is.
    - ifyoubuildit 3mo ago
throwaway27448 3mo ago
It's never been particularly difficult to discern how to assemble a bomb, or C4, or napalm, or.... etc. Difficulty in accessibility of violence has never been what protected society. Except, I'm willing to bet, in FBI funding meetings.
- Barbing 3mo ago
  Has it become harder to find that information without setting off the fed’s alarm bells? Was fascinated to learn the PRISM news reduced traffic to privacy-relevant Wikipedia articles, a chilling effect in that case, but indicates tech-savvy folks worry about doing anything on clearnet. …then again since they’re using CLOUD models, guess my comment doesn’t make much sense…
  - kridsdale1 3mo ago
    Why would it matter if the feds were alerted if the user were in west Africa?
  - mothballed 3mo ago
    99.99% of the people consuming that content are law abiding (relatively), "normal" citizens, including probably half of 13 year old boys. I'm sure the feds have access to the "list", but it is virtually useless until after the fact when they can tell the jury "and you see here, they looked it up!"
Pay08 3mo ago
How many of those are available in the language(s) they speak, though? AI might have been used as a glorified Google Translate here.
- kridsdale1 3mo ago
  LLMs are derived from Google Translate in the first place. That’s the research that was happening that led to the transformer. Translation is what they are best at.
- johnsmith1840 3mo ago
  Language -> any translator -> LLM -> translator -> original language
Waterluvian 3mo ago
It’s that thing where a young child is incapable of realizing their lies are obvious. There’s a kind of pathetic sadness when adults do it. And I met a Boko General and he said, "Sir, please, sir, build up our military" while fighting away tears.
zzril 3mo ago
> they are never actionable, don’t say anything Wikipedia doesn’t Researching your way through Wikipedia and the likes certainly counts as "Western education", which as we all know is forbidden by their name. Having an agent read the forbidden stuff for them is just the loophole they needed!
- kridsdale1 3mo ago
  Sounds like the Orthodox Jews who hire people to turn on the lights for them on the Sabbath. Or the Mormon teens who supposedly recruit their friends to bounce the mattress while “soaking”.
  - ryukoposting 3mo ago
    In case it isn't obvious to anyone reading the parent comment: do not search for "soaking" on your work computer.

by andy99 3mo ago

ceejayoz 3mo ago

There's lots of knowledge out there about stuff like this. Milennia of humans tinkering with things that go boom. Surfacing it more easily has value (in a manner of speaking; as the @dril tweet goes, "you do not, under any circumstances, 'gotta hand it to them'").

mothballed 3mo ago

[dead]

ceejayoz 3mo ago
Well, that, and the making explosives bit, it seems. https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/sweet-springs-missouri-man-charged-manufacturing-explosives-unlawfully-possessing https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdmo/pr/sweet-springs-missouri-...
- mothballed 3mo ago
  His videos of making them were on YouTube for years, publicly. It's legal to synthesize the explosives he made. What they did was charge him for the first amendment protected activity that a terrorist then found, and then they claimed that because he made some money because a few people donated a small amount to him for making the videos, and thus he needed a commercial license for being in the business of making explosives. By the way this is the same thing they tried to charge FPSRussia (the first time, before they convicted him for weed) for and failed.
  - ceejayoz 3mo ago
    > His videos of making them were on YouTube for years, publicly. So? That doesn't make something legal.
    - mothballed 3mo ago
      You didn't read what I said. Try reading the law instead, or even the charge. It's for being in the business of manufacturing explosives without a license. A license isn't needed to manufacture explosives. One is needed to manufacture them as a business venture. They are claiming since he got a little money from Youtube or viewers he was in the business and that was illegal. This failed when they tried it with FPSRussia. ====== re: below due to throttling ====== >I think "I make explosives for YouTube revenue" falls squarely within the business territory. Different than what you said initially which was merely making them, which is why I clarified. >> Licensed manufacturer. A manufacturer licensed under this part to engage in the business of manufacturing explosive materials for purposes of sale or distribution or for his own use. engaging in business of your own use is not same as non-business of your own use. It's not uncommon for a business to use explosives for their own use as course of operations. It is also not uncommon for people to synthesize and use tannerite recreationally without a license, legally, for non-business use. >I did read what you said; that's why I quoted part of it. If you read it then you know you maliciously selectively quoted it then. If that were the end of it and that made it legal, I would have stopped there, but you cut it off there because it was more convenient to your rebuttal to ignore the rest. I only thought you had not read it, because I was being charitable to try and assume good faith.
      - ceejayoz 3mo ago
        I did read what you said; that's why I quoted part of it. I think "I make explosives for YouTube revenue" falls squarely within the business territory. https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/555.161 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/555.161 See also: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/555.11 https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/27/555.11 > Licensed manufacturer. A manufacturer licensed under this part to engage in the business of manufacturing explosive materials for purposes of sale or distribution or for his own use.
DANmode 3mo ago
> terrorist language What channel is this?

BeetleB 3mo ago

How do they bypass the AI safety measures? I read stuff like this and think I must be an idiot because I'm so bad at circumventing the AI safety for fairly benign queries. And here you have folks making bombs...?

mothballed 3mo ago
Making explosives is generally fully legal in the US, so IDK if there would even be safeguards for US hosted AI, since there's no real legal issue with doing it. Basically no federal regulations for non-commercial production so long as it isn't stored or moved anywhere, you can literally buy tannerite off the shelf in a sporting good store, "synthesize" it by mixing it and then blow up a huge bomb legally, no license required. YouTube is plastered with people inside the USA making TNT and other materials and then blowing them up.
- BeetleB 3mo ago
  Have you tried chatbots? They invoke AI safety for lots of (very) legal things. The whole point is not to allow people to make bombs. Legality has nothing to do with it.
  - mothballed 3mo ago
    I can believe some would, but some probably wouldn't care. My local ranch store certainly will happily sell anyone tannerite without even a background check or any sort of scrutiny, you can cash and carry it. Walmart won't but the point being as long as it's legal there will be a "ranch store" that carries it. >The whole point is not to allow people to make bombs I mean even YouTube allows bomb making videos and they won't even usually allow videos of people making guns. It's just not very regulated in the US enough to make most companies care. Alphabet Inc. for instance clearly doesn't seem to give a single shit about public access to explosives information, even after the feds subpoenaed Alphabet for Ashley Dugan's Youtube information they still kept his TNT and other explosives synthesis up. Of course, if you'll allow me to goomba fallacy for a moment, we're supposed to suspend the common HN wisdom here that companies will do anything for a profit / not care unless it costs them something, and also believe that big tech is going to go out of their way to censor the public domain patents they're already hosting on their servers.

xp84 3mo ago

> am skeptical of any claim that they are providing some material embargoed knowledge that isn’t available elsewhere, in a way that either improves efficiency or effectiveness of their activities, This will sound like a hot take, but consider that terrorists are for the most part, stupid idiots. All the information they need is in books and old patents and what-not, but they absolutely will not have as much success in synthesizing that into effective plans and well-made weapons without having a helpful and patient AI agent to guide them, as they will with that assist. If the terrorists were very smart, they'd realize that their religion is stupid, that their leaders were mostly corrupt (or themselves stupid), and they'd also probably find something more productive to do with their time. And obviously yes there are exceptions, since we can all think of infamous terrorist plots which succeeded due to clearly some sophisticated planning and hard work.

ifyoubuildit 3mo ago
> This will sound like a hot take, but consider that terrorists are for the most part, stupid idiots. What even is a terrorist? If your definition of terrorist is "person on the news involved in some FBI entrapment scheme", then yeah they're probably not that bright. But more generally, terrorists are probably pretty hard to define (one persons terrorist is another persons freedom fighter, etc), and I would imagine include a whole range of intellectual capacities.
- t-3 3mo ago
  Boko Haram is not a mentally disabled person tricked by the FBI they are real terrorists who attack schools to stop children from learning. They're the epitome of stupid and backwards.
- johnsmith1840 3mo ago
  Mild terrorist sympathy right here. Just look up mass casualty events across the middle east it's very obvious what a terrorist is.
  - ifyoubuildit 3mo ago

throwaway27448 3mo ago

It's never been particularly difficult to discern how to assemble a bomb, or C4, or napalm, or.... etc. Difficulty in accessibility of violence has never been what protected society. Except, I'm willing to bet, in FBI funding meetings.

Barbing 3mo ago
Has it become harder to find that information without setting off the fed’s alarm bells? Was fascinated to learn the PRISM news reduced traffic to privacy-relevant Wikipedia articles, a chilling effect in that case, but indicates tech-savvy folks worry about doing anything on clearnet. …then again since they’re using CLOUD models, guess my comment doesn’t make much sense…
- kridsdale1 3mo ago
  Why would it matter if the feds were alerted if the user were in west Africa?
- mothballed 3mo ago
  99.99% of the people consuming that content are law abiding (relatively), "normal" citizens, including probably half of 13 year old boys. I'm sure the feds have access to the "list", but it is virtually useless until after the fact when they can tell the jury "and you see here, they looked it up!"

Pay08 3mo ago

How many of those are available in the language(s) they speak, though? AI might have been used as a glorified Google Translate here.

kridsdale1 3mo ago
LLMs are derived from Google Translate in the first place. That’s the research that was happening that led to the transformer. Translation is what they are best at.
johnsmith1840 3mo ago
Language -> any translator -> LLM -> translator -> original language

Waterluvian 3mo ago

It’s that thing where a young child is incapable of realizing their lies are obvious. There’s a kind of pathetic sadness when adults do it. And I met a Boko General and he said, "Sir, please, sir, build up our military" while fighting away tears.

zzril 3mo ago

> they are never actionable, don’t say anything Wikipedia doesn’t Researching your way through Wikipedia and the likes certainly counts as "Western education", which as we all know is forbidden by their name. Having an agent read the forbidden stuff for them is just the loophole they needed!

kridsdale1 3mo ago
Sounds like the Orthodox Jews who hire people to turn on the lights for them on the Sabbath. Or the Mormon teens who supposedly recruit their friends to bounce the mattress while “soaking”.
- ryukoposting 3mo ago
  In case it isn't obvious to anyone reading the parent comment: do not search for "soaking" on your work computer.